![]() He punched a singer whose records he had once produced, portrayed a travelling musician in the film “Cold Mountain,” and dated Renée Zellweger. (For “Fell in Love with a Girl,” the director Michel Gondry rendered the band entirely in Lego.) No longer re-covering couches, White played the celebrity as well as he had played the up-and-comer. (In fact, they were once married.) In 2001, the band signed with V2 Records, sold a sizable number of albums, and got its delightful, high-concept videos shown on MTV. While the group built an audience, White worked as an upholsterer, and the pair tinkered with their identities, teasing an increasingly adoring press with the myth of being siblings. ![]() ![]() ![]() The early albums were made with cheap gear on small budgets for Sympathy for the Record Industry, a respected indie label, and drew their inspiration from the blues, the most American of pop forms. However, as Jack White’s solo music has sometimes proven, it was the certain chemistry between the two of them that made them so special.Jack White, the singer, guitarist, and songwriter of the White Stripes, started the duo, with Meg White on drums, in Detroit in 1997. Indeed Jack White has gone on to solo success and runs the highly acclaimed label Third Man whilst Meg has stayed away from music. By 2011 though they had split indefinitely with Jack White citing Meg White’s lack of enthusiasm as a reason for the break up. Jack White had already started working with other musicians in various projects but the White Stripes continued to tour releasing an acclaimed documentary Under Great White Northern Lights in 2010. The former showcases the band using more acoustic textures and noticeably piano driven songs and the latter returns to the group’s punk and garage beginnings for one final outing before the band called it a day. It was hard to know where the White Stripes could possibly go after this kind of worldwide success but they made two further albums in Get Behind Me Satan and Icky Thump. It is now ubiquitous and its melody is regularly sung at political events and in sports stadiums most notably at rallies for UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Its opening track 'Seven Nation Army' with its distinctive bass line has become a modern classic. By now the band were unstoppable and the album contained more stone cold classics to prove that the success of White Blood Cells was no flash in the pan. They recorded their fourth album Elephant in London at the all-analogue studio Toe Rag. Noticeably less bluesy than previous records, White Blood Cells retains their back to basics approach but welds it with several soon-to-be-anthems. ![]() It contains many of their most memorable tracks including 'Hotel Yorba', 'Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground' and 'We’re Going to be Friends' proving that the White Stripes had the songwriting nous to take them away from the garage and into the stadiums and to mainstream success. By now they were making waves across the great Atlantic ocean and their third album White Blood Cells was re-issued by major label V2. The band were a breath of fresh air amongst the more produced and synthetic music of the day and a year later they returned with De Stijl which was more of the same scuzzy lo-fi rock delivered in the most primitive and raw way possible. The album was a revelation in pairing Jack White’s howling blues-influenced vocal delivery and exemplary guitar playing with Meg’s rudimentary but effective drumming. It wasn’t until he asked his non-musician wife Meg to try to hit the drums along to his bluesy guitar riffs did anything magical happen and they very quickly signed to underground indie label Sympathy For The Record Industry for their self titled debut. They emerged as black, red and white-clad unknowns out of a Detroit backwater almost single handedly sparking the garage-rock revival and left several years later with a bunch of acclaimed records and an internationally known anthem under their belts.Īlthough it seemed like they emerged fully formed, Jack White had been pottering around the Detroit scene for some years playing with a multitude of bands. The not brother and sister duo who made up the White Stripes. ![]()
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